The Hieromonk Mikhail  (Chepel)

"EXACTLY ON THE CONTRARY"

A collection of articles

We present to your attention a book of interest, because, first of all, it reveals an unique life and spiritual experience of the man who was able to realize himself in various activities. These articles are based on some of the records that he has done for more than twenty years. According to the Hieromonk Mikhail, "Skillfully presented lie can be compared with higher mathematics in the unavailability of understanding. Those who want to deceive you, don`t want you to have a critical estimation of what they say and write". To check what is the truth of spiritual essence proposed under the guise of beautiful words about God and about love, he proposes to use the method of" Vice versa" - Satan can be in the likeness of an angel of light, powers of darkness can use the Name of Christ and His words, the worst crimes can be carried out under the guise of the tinsel of the most beautiful words. How is this to understand?  This book is an attempt to answer such a complex question.
For a wide range of readers.

CONTENT

Exactly on the contrary

About repentance

The first step on the path to salvation

About prayer

Marriage

About sins against the seventh commandment

The thorny path of salvation

Scripture as a compass in the sea of life

About envy

Flesh as the enemy of man's salvation

The end of earthly history of mankind

Sickness and healing

About the last judgment and the court of human

About Russia and its history

Mirages of the occultism

"EXACTLY ON THE CONTRARY"

It is not enough to know the enemy, you need be able to defeat him. But how can we win if we even don`t see the enemy?

For a sincere believer is not difficult to answer the question: "Who is the Truth?" Satan is a lie and the father of lies. It is exactly the opposite. The lie has infinitely many faces, it is a chameleon.  It is always very difficult to find, realize and understand it because of the large number of reasons. Fortunately there is a great basis for the ability to see the Truth - the Bible, primarily, the New Testament. But the understanding of Scripture is possible only in the Orthodox Church, on the basis of the patristic tradition.

The methodological principles can be revealed through this. They help properly to orient oneself in life and in spiritual warfare. One of them is the principle of "Vice versa" – “Exactly on the Contrary”; it  seems to me extremely important to expose the "absolute truths" offered by "great teachers",  guru, "prophets unrecognized in their own country" and others of that ilk. Skillfully presented lie can be compared with higher mathematics in the unavailability of understanding, although such a noble science has nothing to do with them. Those who want to deceive you, don`t want you to have critical estimation of what they say and write. They use lies, intimidation, the formation of different forms of fear, the substitution of concepts.

I went to God by a difficult and winding path. We, the children of the post-war generation, had to survive and to win our rights in the street. The physical weakness was not forgiven, and the ability to fight gave the respect, authority and power that were more real than by some of the administrators. Remember fighting street to street, school to school, quarter on quarter. But even then I was very worried about: what is the meaning of this? Is the life on this earth possible without a struggle for existence?

Later, as a teacher of philosophy, including the East one, I could not pass its applied aspects. I had studied all the literature got in special libraries. I had studied meditation, as one of the possible forms of auto-training.  When analyzing, I came to the conclusion that all these processes took place through consciousness. It is possible to achieve high results in self-organization, and people achieve it.

In the late 1980-ies many specialists were coming from all over the Soviet Union to our Scientific-practical center of psychophysiology of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Renowned academicians, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other specialists were working in the centre. In the early 1990's the activities of our academic institution were highly evaluated by the world of science; this is confirmed by the invitations of its leaders in the scientific centers of Europe and the United States to share experience.

One of the activities of the Centre was connected with the study of non-traditional methods of treatment.  We have already seen remote catastrophic consequences of the fact that a wave of Eastern teachings of various kinds came to Russia. In a blink homebrew masters of different schools appeared, as a rule, they were trained for many years in Tibet", in China. However, what in China has been studied for many years we studied two or three weeks...

The results were quick. In 1993 a meeting of psychiatrists and psychotherapists of Moscow was convened due to the sharply increasing number of patients as a result of the extrasensory activities. I was invited as an expert of unconventional methods of treatment. Even then, I paid attention to the fact that the rehabilitation of such patients was very complex, and a spiritual component, implemented through the Orthodox Church, the changes in their consciousness, distorting reality, were very important..

For example, the author of "Diagnostics of karma" Lazarev specifically calls himself a philosopher, numbering himself with some "elite layer in science and healing" to cut off immediately all attempts to understand the underlying essence of his writing. "Read and do" - this is his credo as the “informative content of the texts in books" is so that it is impossible for a   simple mortal to understand it. And what can be more dangerous than knowledge without any understanding .

The principle of "Vice versa" is known and used by the saints for a very long time. For example, it was used by the monk reverend Neil Myrrh-streaming of Athos: "As the Precursor preached the baptism by the Truth, and converted to the path of salvation, as on the contrary, too much care (brilliant insight of the monk in the 19th century about the current level of foreign service. H. M. CH.) obscures feelings of a person in order to make a person not sensitive to his  salvation, that he could not experience salvation, because of many carnal concerns. That is, people will not feel any desire for the eternal future life, no fear of the eternal damnation". What else can be added, except the admiration before the insights of Holiness?

The law “exactly the opposite " is irreversible, as it is the classical expression of the struggle of opposites (but not their unity). In the spiritual world dialectics of Hegel does not work: the light cannot be one with the darkness, the dualism is unacceptable to the Christian consciousness. The devil is not able to create. He's a destroyer. He can destroy something that is not created by him. This circumstance helps to see the effect of the law “exactly the opposite".

The Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) has said about the principle of “Vise versa” well: "If we seriously accept one place, we must also integrally seriously accept the other one." Reread the gospel parable of the sheep and the goats, as a sample for the implementation and understanding of the principle of "Vice versa".

If the Lord gives Love and Salvation, the Satan gives anger, hatred, death.  It is rather difficult to discern difference between sin and the norm of life. This fact served as an additional reason for writing this book. With the spiritual growth the sense of sin and of being sinful will go from conscious to unconscious, as they say "to feel by skin". In many cases you will not become an easy prey of sin; the commandments of Christ will enter into flesh and blood.

Not accidentally the streams of information fall on our heads. Everything is done in order to distract us from thinking about eternity, about the meaning of life. But our mind must be pure. Only then we will hear the voice of God in our souls. His Holiness the Patriarch Alexy II quoted the English Christian writer K. C. Lewis, who said:  “The God speaks  to us in a whisper of love; when we don`t hear - with  the voice of conscience; and only if we do not hear again - through the mouthpiece of suffering. The God is always open for us, believes in us and helps us, but we have forgotten how to hear and understand Him.

Is it changeless? No, for we are created in the image and likeness of God. Ask and it will be given. In the prayer it is important not the technique, but the sincerity and purity of heart, love to God and humility before Him. 

The forces of darkness change policy flexibly. Formerly they acted more through wars, the looting peoples and the strife between them, invoking the curse of God. Now they act through the activation of sin in the world, through the collapse of an unnecessary information in the brain in which the necessary information is lost, through the cult of entertainment and enjoyment, the substitution of meanings, attempt to eradicate from the minds any thoughts about the essence of the Christian life, as an unfortunate misunderstanding that hinders living. In a complex kaleidoscope of events, many people  can`t distinguish the good from the bad, especially since both are increasingly called the same...

But people sincerely trusting in Christ and seeking to live according to His commandments,  will always find in the Church the right path among all the disturbances of the stormy sea of life.

The method “exactly the opposite” can help them on this path, it gives them the ability to learn to identify the darkness that wears the robe of Light.

About repentance

...How many people have no idea what is sin and salvation! Many times I was told by different people that you with your concerns "earned" a Kingdom of heaven. What did help me not to treat such frivolous statements seriously?  It was something that I loved to read the lives of the saints, the works of the Holy fathers. St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) wrote: "Those who give for the good deeds of the fallen nature unmerited high scores fall into the greatest spiritual error. They despise and reject Christ." And then one day, while living in the monastery, I decided not just to confess, but to put myself on trial without a defender, and my conscience would be a Prosecutor, and the soul would be a defendant.

From the first meeting I myself became ill, and after writing a confession on the results of the first meeting fear overcame me. It really became frightfully, my life crushed, I fell into despair - why and what for I had lived?  I understood that such seemingly a "good man" didn`t deserve an especial good, if the judgement is fair. After all I had weakness in the legs, and lay two hours and then with fear and excitement went to confession. To be honest, it was not so scary before. And that was the beginning of my spiritual life.

The lives of the elders, their description of sins and their actions, as if opened boils of my sick soul, every sin I prayed with tears. Silouan of Athos wrote:” The soul spends its whole life in the struggle with thoughts. But don`t despair, the Lord loves a courageous fighter".

To get rid of sins I should rigidly change a lot in my life. You should brush your soul as glass, through which children look at the Sun; and our soul must be pure so, that we could see the God. As Christ the Savior said in the Mountain sermon: “Those who have pure hearts are blessed, for they will see the God".

By His Grace God has given us time, which is a huge value, because we can use it for our own salvation, for the path to God. Beyond the world, which we're in, there is no time; and if time is not necessary in the Kingdom of heaven, where we are with God, the greatest fear is that there is no time in the hell too.

Alas, not all confessions are accepted, as many people do not even understand what and, most importantly, why they must repent. Not everyone can say together with the Holy King David: "I know my transgression." Many people do not only see their sins, but they come to confession for something quite different, as to a magical ritual, after which they would be "better", and certainly they want it immediately. Remember Marfusha from a fairy tale "Morozko". He asks her: "Is it not too cold you, girl, is it not too cold you, Beauty?"And she said to him: "You, old fool, give me a bridegroom, and a richer one!" So do many people: they run in the temple, wave cross and go to "Marfusha`s confession" so that all good things, they dream about, will come true as quick as possible...

We must believe in the saving ordinance of repentance, we must not despair, but believe in the Grace of God. And we must evaluate our misconducts so as we would condemn them in a strange man, if we were a Prosecutor. We must be gracious to others, but strict to ourselves. Any excuse is a log for a hellish furnace.

Even those, who read and study the Scriptures, the patristic literature, do not understand everything they read; they can't retell sense if they are asked about it. "Our death begins through destruction of our communication with God and join in fellowship with the fallen spirits," wrote St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). You need ask for the gracious help of God, which sanctify and renew a man.

Pride and vanity are dangerous because they can be hidden from people who can honor the possessor of these qualities for a Holy. The errors of those who, blinded by pride and conceit, give their conducts of a fallen nature an extrinsic price, have ruined so many souls! According to St. Ignatius, all saints have left their truth and they were seeking the truth of God, because a corrupted nature has a corrupted truth.

In the modern world people are increasingly proud of their sinfulness, flaunt it. It is a painful manifestation of alienation from God, the earthen beginning of eternal death - how can the Lord forgive a man's sin, if that does not only ask about it, but also puts it for his credit?

To begin to comprehend the sacraments of the Church we must prepare our soul. If there is no prepared soil, everything is useless. Those, who have learned to redraw the characters, have not learned by this the Chinese language.

The beginning of spiritual life is that, when the man looks into his own soul and sees in it a multitude of sins. True repentance is defined by three points: the examination of conscience, contrition of heart, confession of sins.

Repentance is a process of a lifetime. Our life is so short that we don't have time to fight with each other, moreover we have no time just to quarrel.

Sins bring with them death, and before it - many sorrows, sometimes called the cross-burden of the man. Carrying the cross with grumble or gratitude is the first sign of our relationship to God. After all, our sorrows are very often just the result of our actions that we have committed in life.

Often people do not see their sins; as they say "the devils close their eyes". Many people   believe that they have no sins... In fact, our whole life is permeated with sins; it is important to learn to see them, but at first it is important to understand why they are so destructive and to want to get rid of them.

There is no need openly to denounce people in their delusions: sometimes the truth expressed by silence is more valuable than the one said aloud. It does not cause sin of   condemnation and retaliatory aggression. That's why they say that silence is gold.

It is not bad that we are sinners: we still must seek Holiness, which is called every Christian to. The Apostle writes: "You are a Royal priesthood, a holy nation, peculiar people". We are looking for food when we are hungry.  Our repentance and our desire to improve our life must be sincere - the Lord will help us with this.

The first step on the path to salvation

The St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) wrote, "The man seeking salvation must admit himself as the   lost." And actually, the majority of people truly do not understand what Christ saves us from. First of all, He saves us from sin and its consequences.

Sin separates the man from God. Sin, initially entered into the world through Adam and Eve,   lives in their descendants against their will. God has redeemed mankind from slavery to sin in Christ, who was similar in His human nature to us in all except sin, but the nature of the people in the days of their earthly life is still perishable. Therefore, a conscientious committing by the man, even the smallest sin leads to the fact that he lapses into more grievous sins, which would seem outwardly not to be related with the first sin, but they are caused by it as a result of the choice between life, according to the commandments of Christ and the life of sin.

Sinful beginning can be compared to a virus that can live in the man many years and not to disturb him, waiting for its hour. But if something happens, the virus begins to destroy the body. Some viruses act on the blood, some - on metabolism, the third viruses -on the liver; the nervous system suffers too. But in any case, they weaken the person, in whose body everything   is interconnected, creating a threat to his life, especially if he is not treated.  Sins act similarly on the man. "Petty" everyday sins do not call to repentance, and they all are more terrible for their incredible weight. There is no such acorn, which potentially has not been the oak: from   an "innocent" offense may be the most terrible consequences, there are a lot of examples both in literature and in life.

It is very difficult to renounce passions, driving the world. People are in it like little parts in a   great locomotive, gaining speed to such an extent, that it is almost impossible to stop it. And if   they are able to get away from it, they can be carried by inertia for a long time. And the more the weight of our sin is, the greater the inertial force is; it is harder to stop it and more time is   needed.

All the sins of the man begin with the failure to observe the first commandment of the Old and New Testaments about the love to God. Many people do not want to have a true concept of God, about the Church, about the Orthodox doctrine, about of Holy christening. It seems to them not  to be related to "real" life, in which witchcraft, divination, the belief in damage are real, coexisting with an atheistic worldview. If such people still come to Church,   following traditions or due to some life issues, they relate to that, what is happening in the Church, as to a kind of magical actions.

Not believing in the immortality and eternal life, they believe that if they light a candle,   something will happen, if they order thanksgiving service, there will be one thing, and if they order the commemoration on Ektenia, then there will be another thing... Some people have gone to the Orthodox Church even for many years, participating in the sacraments of the Church, but they have kept this world-outlook. They have no reverence, no respect for Holy things, and they wonder why there is all in their life so bad...

Some come to the temple as to the club of interests; not having another circle of communion, they discuss before or after, and sometimes during Church prayer empty gossips. Appealing to God for help, people with this world-outlook can address in parallel “for reliability" to sorcerers, psychics. They don't believe in the love of the Lord, and if they hear about it, they think that they  can`t  be afraid of Him; if He is good, then there won`t be any consequences, if they break  His commandments...

Such people should read not the Gospel, but the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, where it is written: "Do not go to those, who call of the dead, and do not go to the wizards, and do not be desecrated of them" and "Man or woman, if they will call the dead or practice sorcery, they should be put to death, they should be beaten with stones, their blood is upon them".

Many people have no faith that they have to give an answer for all committed actions; they look at life's events through the prism of how” lucky or unlucky they are,; they don`t  seek underlying causes.  They cannot distinguish the Providence of God concerning the man, when everybody in the days of the earthly life, as if deep he fell, has a chance for repentance and salvation, from determinism, which assumes that all our actions are predetermined and,   whatever we did, it will happen all the same, what will happen.

The lack of a strong faith in God, love for Him is a solid foundation for the construction of a   sinful building, because without having this internal limiter, people can easily commit those offenses or crimes, of which they would not have thought, if they had had this core inside.

But, as the Savior said, the love of God begins with love to your neighbor. And the neighbor is every person, with whom life brings us together. To be baptized, to make bows with all together during divine worship is an indicator of participation in it. The conversation during the service is a direct disrespect to the Lord. Why do you go to one, whom you don`t love and respect? But it is equally important to help those, who are around us and those, who are bad; without this, all our prayers can become just ritual actions.

One man asked the priest: "I ask for mercy from God, while asking for the others state punishment, according to the law; can I ask then so for me?" And it is not an idle question. The Gospel tells us that we will be judged by the court, which we judge the others, that it will be   preferred to us the same requirements of perfection, which we expect from the others, and the punishment will be the same as we punish someone for this act.                                                       When a person has a lot of uncertainty, he is haunted by fears in his life, it means that he is still far from the Lord. Evidence of good faith is that its owner trusts in God so that he goes through life confidently, not sticking in the imaginary and real problems.

About prayer

Each man is given a great right to appeal directly to God, to the Mother of God and all the saints. It is problematically to try to come directly to the Governor or even  to a smaller official... the Lord is open to everyone, unlike the powers that be...

In the Scriptures the Lord Jesus Christ says a lot about what the prayer should be: it must be permeated by faith in Christ the Savior and the realization of own infirmity "Without Me you can do nothing" (Jn. 15,5), “ Men are impossible to do something, but with God all things are possible" (Matt. 19, 26); it must be constant, in spite of all the difficulties of life, " You should always  pray and not lose heart" (LK. 18,1, 7-8).

Our prayer to God should be imbued with gratitude for the gifts that He gives us, even if we sometimes do not notice them. As the Apostle Paul writes: "With thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Phil. 4,6), teaching us to "give thanks for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 5, 20).

We must pray for the all Russian land, and the Lord will not forsake us. In sacred places we feel a special presence of God. Nikolai Konyaev gives one of such examples in the article "The Church over the Volkhov": "... in 1783, a miracle happened. Fishermen setting a net saw a wonderful icon surrounding with a marvelous glow floating above the water. Accompanied by crowds of pilgrims, the icon sailed past the Volkhov till the river Tikhvinka and stopped here  near the Antony Dymsky monastery, on the land, which was prayed by the monk Anthony (memory of Rev. Anthony Dymsky is on  January 17th and 24th of June, old style) and his disciples. And here grew the famous monastery, founded in honor of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God.

A similar case with the icon of the Mother of God occurred in the village of Mikhailovskoye Furmanov district of the Ivanovo region of the Church. This icon pointed to the place of the   construction of the Church.   It is in the iconostasis here. Here shone the monk rever. Leontius of Michailovskiy . Miracles of healing began at the tomb of the Saint and continue to this day at his Holy relics in the Church.  The source predicted by him has exceptional healing powers. The author of this article felt   several times the beneficial effect of St. Leontius of Michailovskiy on himself.

It would be nice if the land of Russia prayed with tears of repentance became a kind of a spiritual temple!

Quite logically, that not turning to God, we don't get help from Him. Many people are confused why those, who turn to the dark forces, get everything they want, sometimes very quickly. The point is that they had to pay “cash” for it immediately ", i.e. with the soul. And don`t wait for pity from demons then, because they always rigidly cling to their own.

We are dear to God, He knows better than we what can be better for us. For example, a loving mother does not allow everything her baby. In human life there are very severe tests - sometimes regardless of which path we have chosen. You needn`t complain and despair, the Lord will not leave you! By faith each of us will be rewarded.

The man, who hasn`t purified himself from passions, can spiritually be corrupted even by the great zeal for prayer. I first read in the book about the ascetics of the Caucasus caves that people craze from the Jesus prayer. It is described the case of one ascetic who crazed reading the Jesus prayer. It was very surprised, but soon I forgot it, because I was far from religion, though, I liked to read the lives of Saints and about the solitary life.

Almost seventeen years later I again heard about a similar case from one of the employees in the monastic hermitage. I was astonished how confidently he talked about this. After all, he was the man who had started to join the ways of God. How can a prayer corrupt a person? As a result of studying this question I found out that the Jesus prayer is not to blame; the problem is who and for what purpose reads it - with the pride of being "chosen" or with humility.

And it is important how it is read. We must not forget that this prayer is addressed directly to the Lord Jesus Christ and the appeal of the person praying to God occurs really. Negligence, pathos, hubris, arrogance, carelessness, banal automaticity, turning into a meaningless murmur, turn the prayer into the sin of blasphemy, which can lead a blasphemer to insanity. It is better not to pray than to pray in such a way.

But the main prayer is that which is done in the Church. Some people do not understand its significance: why is it, I can pray at home? First, the common prayer is more powerful than   the individual one, according to the words of the Savior: "where two or three are gathered in My Name, there is I with them". Secondly, you must understand the very nature of the Church as the Body of Christ.  In the communion Liturgy all Communicants become one unity, the people of God. But even the Church prayer can corrupt person in those conditions mentioned above.

The Lord is ready to give each of us the eternal life He has all forgiven, He has united in Christ with human nature, He has built a Church for our salvation. And we are still ungrateful, accusing Him in all our tribulations… Without faith, love for God and people we wonder why our prayers are not effective...

Meanwhile, sincere prayer will always be heard: "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you   will find; knock, and it will be opened to you; as everybody, who asks, receives that, and who seeks finds that, and who knocks it will be opened to him" (Matt. 7,7; LK. 11, 9-10).Not just a law is given here, but the algorithm of life.

About marriage

The Union of a man and a woman is blessed by God from the beginning, and then repeatedly affirmed in the Scriptures: "Be fruitful and multiply", "husbands love your wives as their own bodies", "let there be two in one flesh". Different measures of the canonical prohibitions were provided in the canons of the Church to those, who shun marriage.

But if these relationships are built without God, solely on the basis of the inclinations of the flesh, it is inevitably a quick disappointment in each other. Instead of "to bear the burdens of each other" the man and the woman look not what they can give, but what they receive in their relationship. Neglecting the joy which can bring them the opportunity of giving another, such a pair begins to see who of them can receive something from the other. Within the union, named one body, there are partnerships, doomed to failure, because nowhere the soul of the man will   be filled but in God.

Libido in itself cannot serve as the basis for a strong union. Not being sanctified by the love and the lawful union, it will always require some new sensations. All sweet earthen things become boring quickly. It starts searching for other "partners", and then comes an inevitable disappointment in them. Stepping on this way people can`t stop. The sins of fornication destroy most successfully the soul and body of the man, destroy his personality, they give birth to death faster than any other sin. Families break up, murders occur by jealousy, it develops the need for perversions, killing the soul of the man and destroying his personality to such an extent that repentance becomes almost impossible for him.

The Apostle writes that "your bodies are the temple of God, and that who joins to a profligate   woman becomes one body with her; that every sin commits outside the body, but the sin of fornication corrupts the body, designed to be the temple of God, therefore fornicators and adulterers desecrate the temple.

In ascetic literature a distinction is made between body and flesh. The human body is the temple of soul, this is the most important part of his two-part beings. And the flesh is "leather garments" given to Adam and Eve in consequence of the fall. This condition, about which the Apostle Paul wrote, that "the good, that I want, I don`t do, but the evil, which I don`t want, I do". And then he writes that “it is not my doing, but of the sin, which dwells in me". The inability to distinguish between the body and the flesh brought representatives of many religious movements to the fact that the body itself was called by them sinful, "prison of the soul". Meanwhile, God was united in Christ with the whole nature of the man – and it was together with body and with soul, sanctified the entire material world.

Therefore, the union of men and women can be very beneficial, but for this a spiritual basis is necessary.  And here you have to understand that spirituality is connected both with God and with the opposing forces against Him. And substitution of spiritual values leads to mortal sins   and an eternal damnation.  Fornication is often called in the modern world love, darkness -   light, robbing people of understanding how they should live. A developed industry of sins is accompanied by a dying human civilization. The dying Empires always steeped in debauchery. Today this is Europe, about its decline Oswald Spengler wrote almost a hundred years ago.

Throughout the history it was often declared that the sin of fornication was associated primarily with women, who supposedly were helpers of Satan in his fight against God. Many inhibitions were introduced for women, artificial attempts to make them forcibly moral with the use of the veil, chastity belts, and other similar inventions. Meanwhile, the modern Europe, and not only Europe, shows how men, who have lost their manhood, can do without women, inventing new forms of perversions. However, women are not far behind them. Therefore, the problem of observance of the seventh commandment is relevant for a person regardless of gender.

Earlier many social prejudices, however, pushed people to the relations, to which they didn`t feel they were called. Those, who wished monasticism, were talked about the fact that if everybody went in the monasteries, who would give birth to children (forgetting that all wouldn`t never go there), for unmarried women were invented such names as "alone for ever and ever", "spinster", instilled in them a complex of uselessness that they definitely must get married, to have a baby... In the end there are many broken lives.

Marriage is a complicated way of two people, which in principle can`t be not thorny. Sometimes in marriage the desire of spouses to each other is maintained throughout their life; sometimes it passes, but it doesn't mean that they can find someone on the side. If it's stifled, and the children are grown, the husband and the wife can by their mutual consent enter the monastic path. Ideally, in a normal family, spiritual and moral growth of the parents must accompany the physical growth of their children, giving them wisdom for upbringing and directing the path to God, mind to answer the most difficult questions of their grown-up   children.

Human life must be in constant remembrance of God, as though standing before Him. Some Christian ascetics achieve this through a clever prayer, by some of them it becomes permanent. Their whole life becomes a prayer, its aim is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, and the objectives are the salvation of the soul and the search for the Kingdom of Heaven. But people, who are far from asceticism, also achieve the same result through helping others, compassion, humility, goodness, forgiveness. If a person sees in the other the image of God, a miracle, which God has   revealed to him, this will be a guarantee that the other will never become for him a tool for the satisfaction of the passions, on the contrary it may be the reason for the victory over these passions.

The whole life of the man whose heart was touched by God, can bear the imprint of that spiritual joy, it can be penetrated with gratitude to God, the desire to do something good for those who are near. But the man is free, and can pretend that there was nothing and continue to sin. But in his heart he will understand that he robs himself.

About the sins against the seventh commandment

The world ceased to fear God. Some representatives of Protestantism tried to turn into something absurd, a kind of "Christianity-light" the fact that God is Love. Many Protestant theologians deny the existence of demons and the hell. The most powerful refutation of their imaginations is that the world around them turns in the hell, where people intoxicated with imaginary impunity live the life, which is a punishment in itself.

The man, wholly surrendered to passion is its slave, he has no freedom. No need to spend money on expensive weapon to defeat hostile people; it is enough to corrupt them. In a passionate carnal body is the same blazing fire, only fuel for it is passion; everything can serve for its   satisfaction. How much grief brings carnal passion, how much is said and written about it, and people still indulge in them as butterflies, flying into the fire. Immorality in the genital area produces terrible results - jealousy, homosexuality, mental illnesses, murders, pedophilia, bestiality... And many of the public sinners already don`t hide whom they serve: in Munich, at one of the demonstrations in support of gays and lesbians, some of the demonstrators were on stilts in the form of the legs of the demons...

But many people simply deny that sins against the seventh commandment are sins and for their justification they find many beautiful words about freedom, about love, about identity, about the choice...Virtually the entire population of the earth goes through these sins  in one form or another. A rare man has escaped them; but, as a rule, this is due to physiology or   it is really the vessels of God, contained in themselves that what is not under the power of the majority.

Mass media actively impose interest in sex, which increasingly gains a symbolic meaning.       Many factors contribute to the increase of this value. Not everybody has prosperity and abundance, but, in general, people have less to struggle for existence in the truest sense of the word. The increasing stress of life also promotes the interest in sex. The cult of the body, the cult of pride, empty interests and values promoted by TV, the full connivance of the authorities also contributed to it. After all, one cannot ignore the fact that this is a huge business, largely, criminal, giving huge profits without costly production.

Though it is bitter to admit it, but many young women receive as a dream and the highest achievement in life not love, not motherhood, but becoming a sex symbol at least for a month to have their pictures in the Nude on the covers of color magazines... Most of those, who put such aim, get either to pornography, or directly to the panel, but are those happy, who have achieved this "success"?

But even among those girls, who have preserved the natural shame there are those who consider that the main decorations are not inner qualities but the parameters of 90-60-90... Meanwhile, as it is well said in the Psalms, " the praise of the king`s daughter is inside her." And the one, who truly loves a woman, will love her not only because of the appearance.

The triumph of the servants of darkness that is called light, which we now see, is very brief and transitory: any act at the moment of its occurrence carries the reward. So the "old Bolsheviks", destroyed the Imperial Russia, died in the Stalinist camps; for the Nazi criminal the Nuremberg trial was waiting. If any person seems to have escaped earthly punishment for his crimes, it only means that he will bear it in eternity, it even is worse for him.

You must understand that sincerely repenting we get rid of sin, but not from its consequences, which you can feel for a long time. For example, to atone her dissolute life for 17 years Saint Mary of Egypt has been suffering in a wilderness for 17 years before reaching the spiritual perfection. There is a story in one Paterik about the old man who lived in the desert, who slept together with lions, protecting him from the cold. And when one traveler was astonished to hear this, the elder said that once these lions would tear him because his dogs had killed a man, and he hadn`t turned them away... And knowing this he didn`t escape from these lions, realizing that there were things worse than death.

In the traditional family the sexual communication of spouses is just a natural part of their relationships, it is legal and does not interfere with their spiritual joy, the growth in God and in the end the eternal bliss. "To avoid fornication" is not the best, but still, in the words of the Apostle, a sufficient basis for marriage. Any other forms of sexual intercourse, no matter how beautiful they are called, are those or other forms of fornication or adultery, a violation of the natural law, which the person feels the more, the less he is spoiled and Vice versa, the more he is spoiled, the less he sees the tragedy of his situation... The violation of this law leads to the loss of faith in man, to stress, frustration, depression, loss of meaning of life. Many people feel hate and bitterness, and some just can't live with the burden of sin.

There is a story of A. P. Chekhov about one seventeen-years-old boy, enticed by the adult woman, who gave him what he wanted. He wanted not that but love. And the disappointment from the difference between the desired and the actual was so strong that the teenager   committed suicide...

The Lord has brought joy to the people, but the man who lives in sin loses the ability to joy, because it is poisoned by sin, and is no longer perceived as joy. Many people try to compensate its absence by seeking pleasure, including sexual pleasure. A man who seeks imaginary pleasures and forgets about the spiritual joy becomes the slave of the passions, while being still alive he becomes a dead decrepit flesh, which needs more and more acute affections and feelings in order to feel something, but the farther he goes down this path, the less he actually can feel something; being still on the earth, he is already living in the hell.

To break the law or not is the choice of the free will of each man. The forces of evil strongly oppose the unity of the man with God, contrive new excuses and explanations for the fact that this is not possible and why it is impossible. Unfortunately, humanity is now increasingly making the choice in favor of Sodom and Gomorrah, causing an immense grief of God. The earth turns into the hell, but while the man is in the body he can struggle against it, overcoming the sinful passions in himself.

The thorny path of salvation

The Lord Jesus Christ brought salvation not as an easy and happy life on the earth. This life, after the fall of Adam and Eve may not be easy - this world is so corrupted by human sins. Can we sweetly sing and live when the earth is filled with the anguish of loss? It felt early Christians. Times erase the memory. Intoxicated by earthly joys and pleasures, we have almost lost the mental anguish and bitterness of parting from whom we, in sinful pride, had rejected.  This anguish lives in the hearts of a few people. Not in those who arrange luxuriant holidays, but in the souls of the Athos monks, such as Silouan of Athos, Orthodox priests, monastics, and in the hearts of some laity, pouring over with tears of loss.

But a modern man, instead to live in cares and labors for the salvation of his soul, is working intensively to improve the life of the flesh. That`s why the better we live (progress, civilization), the farther we are from God. "Do not store up treasures on earth". Our wealth should be in God.

The Lord has given us not only commandments as the way to Him, but thousands of tips, for example, in the form of the same feelings and intuition. But the demonic influence on the fallen man is possible through the same feelings and intuition. Therefore a spiritual sobriety and caution are so necessary.

The man has only on earth a high freedom of action. On earth I can make decisions, have certain results. We have freedom of choice, but this does not apply to the existence on the other side of life.

Awareness of the need of salvation will come sooner or later almost to everyone. It is a   tragedy, when it comes before his death, when there is no strength and opportunities for repentance.

The remembrance of God is often already useless before death. It is rather thoughts of lost, a late repentance, which failed to grow  up to the repentance of the thief crucified next to Christ  and entered with Him into Paradise.

The Scriptures tell us that "the Kingdom of God is taken by power." It means you must make every effort, desire. But there are good people who for the sake of buying some things or objects put much more effort.

Any freedom in the world will at least be a hidden form of slavery. "Slavery" to God gives a true freedom through the knowledge of the truth: "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Each man goes to God his own way; there are no restrictions in it. It is only important to respond with the soul and the heart to the call: "Come unto Me, all who hardly work and are heavy overburdened." The history of Church history demonstrates different ways of joining its bosom. Many people came out from the Gentiles and become great adherents of the Christian faith. Many came, not satisfied with the materialism and atheism, others have gone from the religious life, believing in atheism, but in time realized the senselessness and futility of the life   without God, returned to religion. No one has been able to abolish death. The Lord Jesus Christ gave all who followed Him eternal life. But unless you're born again, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (John. 3.3).

The words “nothing is given gratis” can seem many people as true words but it is the lie; God gives any gift just like that, without any conditions, and He has commanded it to His disciples. Also our good works must not be transformed into a "bribe" to God, to ensure in the future "warm places". They   lose their meaning then.

On the way to salvation you need to cope with many false fears and challenges. We are afraid of the world and what it can do to us, but we must be afraid of committing sins.

You should earn the eternal life with sweat and sorrow, pay more attention to this but not to   worldly problems. It is foolish to choose a crumb of bread instead of a whole loaf. Every step in life will be very hard, but never forget to praise the Lord. The harder the test is, the louder praise Him. Louder, stronger, whatever weak you were.

The goal of a simple laymen is not to seek the Truth, it exists a priori, and to come to its   understanding and by interacting with practice to come to salvation.

The smallest fluctuation in the faith is unacceptable. But it is possible to be Thomas...

It's a pity to look at churches, which are empty even on weekends. Why are we so cruel and indifferent? But the crucifixion of Christ is still a heavy burden on the conscience of each of us, as we are the same people, whose indifference has led to the Savior`s crucifixion.

We are eternally indebted to God. Let's go back to God in our prayers, let us return to our house, refusing to various rogues, speculating in the name of God. And it is no fear that you do not know how to pray. It is an art that we have to learn, but the Lord by His grace does not require from us even this.

Listen to the words of the great Saint of God St. John of Kronstadt and let us get them through our mind and heart: "The Lord is so merciful that does not shun our prayer, but humbly accepts any one and He corrects it if it is imperfect, if only we turn to Him sincerely and don`t forget Him quite."

Actions and deeds are the basis of faith. It is necessary not only to have knowledge about the faith, but also to implement them in life with regard to the requirements of faith.

"We do not thank God for what we have, we have to thank," said St. John of Kronstadt. There are a lot of good in the life of each of us, just we must be able to see and appreciate it. Never despair; despair is a direct temptation of Satan. The Lord doesn`t give us trials above our strengths; each of us can discover God and feel like in heaven, while still living on earth, but it is necessary for it to see the meaning of one`s own life in Christ, in love to God and neighbors.

Scripture as the compass in the sea of life

The present world is constructed by the devil, so that it is impossible to live and not to sin. And, as history shows, the world has always been so. Therefore it is impossible to be saved only at our desire. But the Lord helps us. He has given us faith, the Church, the sacraments. And if our desire is undeniable and solid among all trials, the Lord will help us. And He gives a chance for each of us.

When there is a lot of superficial knowledge, it can appear the illusion of the power of the human mind, its own "omnipotence". And the real wise men say: "I know that I know nothing". A great philosopher is not that man, who vaguely says and writes a lot, but that one, who clearly understands and expresses the depth of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.  A man-philosopher is not something extraordinary.  There are many philosophers in art, literature, poetry. There are only few people, who perceive the fabulist Krylov as a philosopher. But after examining the contents of his works you find in him a wise venerable philosopher.

There are people who are still ashamed of the concept of Holiness. Among young people it might sound like an insult. This is a grafted habit of living in sin.

You must understand that there are not many paths to God, and forms of the passage of   this way. Everyone has his own way. Homeless, drunks, bums, bullies have an utmost path. But   you won`t find in the Gospel that the Savior refuses them. These people have not less chances to be saved than the highly educated minds.

Imagine how it will be bitter to those, who considered themselves Christians, if in an endless stream of eternity in the hell we'll remember an infinite number of ways, methods, which were sent to us by God for salvation. And we, pampered with "the joys and pleasures” of the earthly life either didn't want to see them, or spinning a finger at the temple, rejected them mocking. Every missed opportunity of salvation we will mourn forever. These sobs are described in the patristic literature. I personally believe.

A guiding star, a compass in a turbulent sea of life for us is the Holy Scripture. Unfortunately, with the availability of the Bible there are still a lot of people, who are not reading it. And this is the Book of books, which is considered to be a treasure of wisdom, given by the Lord to mankind for life on earth. It is a difficult and long path to entry into the world of the Bible. You need serious knowledge, you must work, you need culture; only then you can understand it as a historical and literary document. The God-manifested secrets of the great Book are opened only to those, who entered the Church of Christ with open heart and uncompromising deep faith. F.M.Dostoevskiy wrote: "What a book is this Scripture, what a miracle and what power, given with it to the man! It is exactly statue of the man and the world and characters of men, and it is all called and shown forever. And so many frank secrets are opened ".

And here are the words of Goethe: "May the spiritual culture go continuously forward, may the natural Sciences continue to grow in breadth and depth, may the human spirit covers all new and new horizons -  we`ll never exceed elevations of moral culture of Christianity, illuminating us from the Gospel".

How firmly the Bible entrenched into the language and thinking of the peoples is obvious from the common proverbs, sayings, aphorisms: "the forbidden fruit", "mark of Cain", "Babel", "Balaam`s ass", "thirty pieces of silver" and so on. All this is taken from the Bible. Without it a lot of things in art and philosophy, history of ideologies would remain unclear.

To feel the Holy Scriptures we must live according to it. For example, military Charter lives only in the army. Read it in civilian life, and it won`t leave on you any impression. But how good it felt “on their skin" those, who served in the army! The Scripture reveals itself through the life of the Church, participation in the sacraments of the Church, a sincere faith. Without this its words will be emasculated for a reading man and their meaning will not reach him.

It's sad and it's a pity that there are so few people in the Church of Christ. But without the Church, each of us, whether a President, a pop star, a member of all Parliaments, new Russian, and it does not matter who we are - this is only a thin blade of grass in a rigorous world, whose raging winds can get it at any time to death before we come to an awareness of the need and the possibility of salvation.

Christ the Savior speaks to us in the Gospel in simple terms, understandable to everyone. To make the understanding the eternal truth easier He spoke in parables, which were realized according to the power of belief. Some of the modern false prophets amaze by the "vast amount of thought, meaningless syllable. They obviously want the reader to have a feeling of inferiority. Sometimes it is a complete nonsense, and they represent it as designed for dedicated, as inaccessible to ordinary mortals because of "a highly saturated density of information".

Can`t they say so simply as Christ? Hence are their unambiguous hints, what people must    believe. They actively shape the community of pagan polytheism, in which everybody prepares   for himself a throne as if it is unknown to them, that the devil does not tolerate any competition.

The Church still remains for all faithful Christians the ark of salvation in this emerging Kingdom of Antichrist, and the Holy Scriptures still remains food for our souls. And it will be till the end of earth's history, for as the Apostle Paul says: “The Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever".

About envy

Envy is a furnace of pride. Envy leads to hatred and enmity, crime and betrayal. This is the root of all evil. This root can flatter the man so strong, that he can craze in the literal and figurative sense, or even commit suicide.  It is the most interesting and the saddest that many people don`t perceive envy as sin.  There is a clear trend now: to call all defects the norm, or to make people indifferent to their existence. The concept of heaven and hell has been declared   "grandmother's tales". Therefore, the attitude of some people to the envy is like something natural.

Meanwhile, it is the root of many sins. No coincidence that the devil physically destroys anyone, who wants to surpass his glory. At first glance it seems paradoxical, but actually there is nothing surprising in the fact that the devil hates the false prophets. Evil does not like when his followers encroach on his superiority. He simply destroys them physically. We can say that the devil controls the level of pride, he cherishes it, grows it in the man, exactly as much as the soul of the man is poisoned. But Satan doesn`t allow to exceed the level of pride. He needs submissive slaves, servants, but no more. However, there are exceptions: if a man in his pride strives to surpass God or pretends to be such (Moon, Sviâsh, Lenin, Vissarion and so on), the adversary assists in it, especially if the spiritual death of many other people occurs through them. But he needs them only tactically while performing their functions by misleading people out of the way of salvation. In eternity they will receive their reward.

A very interesting link between carnal philosophizing (Psilafism) and envy, inducing   murders, was opened by Neil Myrrh-streaming. Envy of Cain has led to physical murder of his brother.

It is easy to catch the man with the help of envy, to make him a puppet. There is no crime, which envy would not have committed. It is terrible for its gluttony. Envy defeats easily any person, regardless of his financial situation.

Envy is sadness about the welfare of others. If you are well with God, envy will be the first to smite you. For example, it declares you crazy, and people turn away from you. The closer you are to God, the more misfortunes, troubles, sorrow you get. Sometimes you will just be shocked upon learning the authors of your troubles. But this confirms the justice and wisdom of the Lord God again!

Don't look for reasons of envy, it is not fastidious. Tools and methods are unlimited. That one, who loves the Lord can`t be jealous of his neighbor.

Envy is endlessly smiling, touchingly attentive, very happy. The same will happen when the envious submits the nails and hammer for your "crucifixion". Envy crucifies until today. It doesn`t matter in what form it is.

Envy is closely connected with the sin of condemnation. Neil Myrrh-streaming said about it:  "Adoration (of prayer. M. Ch.) by slanderers, condemning their neighbor, is abomination before God." He continues his thought then: "Thanks (prayer) of slanderers are abomination before God." That is that one, who condemns others, should not even pray.

Humanity is caught in the net of the devil, but it is so cleverly done that in most cases we can`t admit even a thought about it.

It is, of course, silly, but all the fuss about our life basically boils down appease a variety of needs of the flesh. Only we naively believe that we are doing great necessary things.

The devil always begins to tempt with what your weakness is.

How to check if you fell into the trap of the devil or not? Often the answer is your response: "exploded" or not. Control of yourself is a good thing, but to bypass your control is nothing for the evil. People often underestimate the mind of the devil and it is in vain. If the devil nurses a human, it is not love. People are carriers of the soul, which they had to kill, but it is as a result of the person's own choice. The misunderstanding of this factor is the source of eternal tragedy of   the man.

Envy does not know how to prefer something useful, and can see the good and be jealously   sad.

The envious man is doomed to eternal torment due to his foolishness. He wants to see whom he envies in the hell stronger than himself in the paradise. This is in principle an inverted consciousness. It is the envious man who does the cruelest tortures, when he has the opportunity. It won`t be more terrible laughing face than the face of the envious man seeing our trouble.

The envious man cannot be a Christian at heart. It doesn`t matter who he is, of what rank and dignity he is if he even regularly beats with his brow on the floor of the Church. The envious man and the Orthodox are the opposite. So you must learn to rejoice in the joy of those around us; to look without the slightest envy at something that the other has,  don`t compare yourself   with anyone in the sense of why he has it, and I don't have; why am I worse than he? If you learn to help others, when they are sad, be happy for them, when they are successful, you will see that   your lives change for the better.  God created us for a happy and blissful life; very often we ourselves with our sins and not any mysterious dark forces interfere with the fact that such a life would already be on our earth.

Flesh as the enemy of man's salvation

The person is often weak and feeble. You can try to see for yourself, how easily you keep a strict fast and how many "good" arguments you find not to comply with it. On coming to the ring to fight with flesh, remember that your lightest spiritual weight is opposed by the powerful carnal counterweight. Your victory will depend on your uncompromising faith, coming from heart and soul.

The flesh controls the mind, but never your soul. It is the flesh that sends impulses to the brain that have nothing to do with the interests of the soul. Incidentally, the expression "urine has hit in your head" is not so unfounded. Such carnal bump can bring the man to insanity and   then to the crime.

The flesh is very experienced, trained by passions and predilections, it is terribly afraid of infringing their rights up to heart attacks, strokes, infarcts,  madness. Crazy people will remain in captivity of the flesh forever. Only the prayers of their friends and relatives can free their soul from eternal slavery. The battle with the flesh doesn`t always ends with victory of the personality.

As soon as you begin to fight with your flesh, infringing its diverse interests by posts and commandments, you will see with horrify how terrible beast you are facing.

Sin like the flesh doesn`t know compassion. When facing this, you can sense the dual essence of human nature. Now the choice is yours. If you select the union with the soul, you will immediately piled by various temptations. Don't be surprised, but even the impotent, who has decided once and for all to end even thinking about it, suddenly recovers without any doctors, and undergoes severe carnal thoughts and temptations.

"Gray hair in beard, a demon in a rib” - this saying is just about that period, when men should think about the salvation of souls seriously. During this period miracle drugs will immediately appear that can make your sex life "harmonious". There is only one question: "What   harmony?"

Neil the Myrrh-streaming wrote: "At first sin gladdens the heart of the man like wine, then it takes possession of him, depriving him consciousness". It is noticed very wisely. I have faced with this in the 1990-s, when some of my friends suddenly decided to start healing and began actively put into practice the cleaning of karma under the guise of repentance. I failed to convince of the falsity of this system. I sat and did not recognize them: they were deaf to all arguments. They were blinded “of successes", they increasingly committed themselves to the forces of darkness. Later, while traveling in Russia, I often met people like them.  They had something in common.  But they didn`t recognize their relationship with the demonic world.

Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) wrote: "There are so many unfortunate people among us,   who believe in Christ as God, but deny the existence of the devil and thereby subvert the work of our salvation, accomplished by the Lord. Denouncing this unbelief, St. John Chrysostom says: "For this cause the Son of God came, may He destroy the works of the devil" (1 Jn. 3,8).

I'd like to ask psychics, healers, parapsychologists, all, who call themselves professionals of  international categories: where is your supersensitive ability, you should feel  on your  own skin the evil breath of Satan, including the printed word. But if you know and keep silent, whom do you serve?

We must always be very careful and maybe be even suspicious about everything,   concerning spiritual and religious issues. They are very delicate and complex. Even the Bible, outside the context of Church life, can be understood only as a historical and literary source.     It is necessary to the man to pass through many difficulties to gain a victory over his flesh. Some people ask: "What are such tests to me for?" Let's look realistically: if there is a severe selection of people in some areas of professional activity in our life, and it is to resolve purely earthly everyday problems, it is nothing to say if the selection is for the eternal life. Sin like a disease is a very terrible, contagious and difficult treatable thing, there is nothing worse than it, because it continues after death. Tests can help us to think about eternity and start fighting with sin.

The Christian life involves a deep study itself. The actual meaning of repentance is not that we go to the priest on every trivial matter, and that we deeply study ourselves, finding not only sins, but their sources, and destroying them, we can overcome our sins. Then the process of repentance will be serious and deeply meaningful. Bu we have to work much and hard, the man   is really a microcosm.

In the modern world many people are simply indifferent to the questions of faith. This is not because they are bad. Their life takes place in a narrow world, where some local worldly   problems are solved and the rest of them are of no interest for them. "I want to live in this world, the other one does not interest me. Everything you say was so long ago, it's not relevant now," they claim. We cannot condemn such people. The point is that behind all the trappings of the material world the problem of confrontation of the forces of hell with God has not only diminished, but increased.

Whether the man wants or doesn`t want - he will have to choose with whom he is. The neutral position, unless leads automatically to the camp of the enemy, makes us defenseless before him. Remember the words of the Savior on Judgment day, which will come when we will be less prepared for it. The choice is not easy, for "the Kingdom of God can be taken by the power." Therefore, Christians must live in such a way to be worthy of the Name that they carry. Nothing is impossible, if you wish, seek and believe.

The end of earthly history of mankind

The Apocalypse is gaining momentum. It is given us for edification not accidentally. Not   accidentally they say that it starts with a change of the "age of Fishes" associated with Christianity, by the "age of Aquarius". Who will come after Christianity we know from the Apocalypse. The number of false prophets will eventually go in the quality – in the Antichrist. On the background of primitive false prophets he will seem magnificent and brilliant, able to lead people and give them a "true salvation". And many people will believe and go. The consciousness of the people in Russia is prepared for his coming by the disciples of Roerich, karma, other anti-Orthodox sects. Life will improve significantly for some time, and it is initial   for the most people, there was even written about the growth of wealth in the documents of the CPSU.

Some time people will live securely, but after they have loved this life, it will begin checking on the loyalty and devotion to the regime. At this time, everyone, who wants this "happy" life in the future, will be offered the seal of the Antichrist.

It is possible that the Antichrist will not call himself by this name, the people are warned in the New Testament. It doesn`t matter what he calls himself. The Scripture is the key to understanding this person: "You identify them by their fruits".

The world will be stilled by satisfaction of the desires of the flesh. Millions of people spend the evenings in cafes, restaurants, stadia and so on, just to kill time. The world is like under anesthesia. The world must become "normal", so that the doctrine of Christ will seem not to be worth of attention, if not absurd.

"A happy and comfortable world" can`t teach a person anything. It is not accidentally that the main principle of St. Silouan the Athonite:"keep the mind in hell” should not be forgotten in any outwardly comfortable life.

Earthly life will still be good, successful, and rich. It`ll be even too good for many people. And all   it must prove that it is good without God, and nothing is to do with Him here. The better we live materially, the more certain the onset of the Apocalypse is. You know how it happens before the storm: quiet, good, nice, but experienced people do not believe and prepare.

A great blessing of God is in providing complete freedom of choice of development path to all mankind until the Apocalypse.

In "The Revelation of Joan Theologian" we find the words about the mark of the Antichrist. The seal is known as an image, or a text, or a combination of both. In the Bible we don`t find guidance about it: "And he`ll do, so that everybody, both the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the bond, will receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead; and that no man might buy or sell, except that, who has that mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name”.

According to the Bible there will be three types of people tags; probably, it will be the sorting similar to concentration camps, but it is unknown what criteria will be used.

"Here is wisdom. Who has a mind, count the number of the beast, for it is a human number, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. (Rev. 13, 16-18).The Reverend Nile Myrrh-streaming wrote about the content of the inscriptions: There will be written on the seal: "I am yours" - "Yes, you are mine". -  "I go according to my will and not by force." - "And I according to your will accept you, and not by force." That is that it is denoted a direct selection in the contents of this seal.

We can assume that a microchip will be implanted under the skin. Now there are successful experiments on its implantation in America; experiments on the control of emotions are especially successful. It is possible that it will be just something like an electronic bar code, according to which it will be possible to identify the person. Those, who didn`t swear allegiance to the false Messiahs will be terribly persecuted.

No one in the world, who has accepted the mark of the Antichrist, will be able to get away from   his total control. Every step will be tracked day and night, giant computers will collect information about all the people that it wouldn`t be the slightest dissent.

People will temporarily accept the Antichrist as they will crave for carnal passions (see the Bible or the Holy Nile Myrrh-streaming) till madness. This will capture a man so that it won`t remain the place for the spiritual life in the soul. The more a person will have servility, the less   place of spiritual life will remain - that's the whole mechanism. It would say a computer expert.

When reading the words of the Holy Nile Myrrh-streaming, we can see that it was put a point finally: “It will be from his (of the Antichrist) amplified effort and the extreme power of his (the Antichrist) angriest children adultery, fornication, sodomy, murder, theft, lie, torment, selling and buying people, buying boys and girls for fornication with them like dogs in the streets."

It is sadly, but all the facts of sales, mentioned by St. Neil have now acquired an unprecedented international scale.

And a great sin starts with something small. If the man doesn`t limit himself in small sins, they   will quickly become like those, that he won`t be able to overcome them, and they involve the other sins like cancer metastases.  However, to repent and change can any person while he is still in the body. It doesn`t matter how deep he fell.

And the branded people will cry under the brutal regime of ”a happy world": “God, what have we done, save us!" And the Second Coming of Chris will come by the prayers of the repentant.

The Second Coming of Christ is unknown, but there are many descriptions of the time before it. But we should not expect serious challenges in order” to repent quickly": the mind will be paralyzed with fear and not be able to confess all sins. The man, turning to God even in a stressful situation, asks Him for the immediate moment. Repentance must be regular. Apocalypse can be stopped: the Lord says about this very clearly, but He gives this choice into our hands. It is a sign of the deepest love and respect of the Lord to His creations.

Sickness and healing

Everything decays, wears out, and to maintain oldness is more expensive than something new.  People wear out and not only personally, but in generations. From the decrepit people born a weak generation, and from the latter - a quite unfit one, and life of this last generation will be more expensive for the reason that life for a sick person is always more expensive than for a healthy person.

People decay because of their weakness and pride, but not because of the imperfections of the creation of God, as some of them try to present it.

Through sickness, the Lord stops us, makes it clear - no one is irreplaceable. Stop, think, realize, and repent. The disease is your chance to stand before God for eternal life. So it is possible that in a sick body a healthy spirit will develop. Your disease is your chance of salvation. To be honest - I didn't understand why is it necessary to torture the flesh, to ask myself the disease, as some elder do. However, it is almost not necessary: the main thing is not to murmur against God for the difficulties, which exist and to thank Him for the good, which is also present in everyone's life.

Will the time come, when people using science become free from all diseases? No, it will never be, it is a delusion of pride. Disease and death are the consequence of the corruption of human nature by sin. We must change our attitude to disease. The insomnia, drugs from it have a destructive effect on the body, but this illness can be seen as a time to think about our life, it becomes a step toward our repentance. Diseases can be divided in those, which are afflicted by God and developed from our social foolishness. Cancer is primarily a disease associated with the violation of moral laws. It is often the self-punishment. But there are exceptions. Treatment is possible, sometimes by the grace of God with the help of doctors, sometimes through religious shrines. However, a purely medical cure of cancer that is always effective will not appear, or other diseases will come to replace oncology, as they came instead of plague and leprosy, which, however, can still be found now. Cancer will mutate, evolve indefinitely in accordance with mutations of vice and sin of mankind. It is naive to believe that someone will save mankind from oncology; from all diseases it is most clearly embodies the sin destructing the man...

A special hazard for humans is the search for healing not by God, not in the Church, and by those who sometimes hide behind the Name of God, but serve the forces, which are hostile to Him.

The elder Joseph of Optina wrote: "Some are healing by bites of snakes, using for it prayers... are Prayers can be meaningless, or even mixed with blasphemy. Such prayers are pleasing to demons, which can be some kind of help."

We must always be very careful and may even be suspicious about everything, with regard to spiritual and religious issues. They are very delicate and complex. Even the Bible, outside the context of Church life, can be understood only as historical and literary source.

If you are a Christian and go to the witch - doctors, psychics, are engaged in cleaning of karma, the adjustment of their own destiny, magic of any color – you have here the principle “exactly the opposite”. Until you are a Christian, you are not affected by it all. And as soon as you will cease to be a Christian, because of your fascination of occult practices, you will not be needed by the forces of darkness, the head of which is called the "father of lie". The higher the title of occultists is, to whom you have applied, the more chances you have with them to say goodbye to God forever.

Prayers offered by different kinds of healers and psychics, have the opposite effect, causing harm to the one who reads them. Speaking in modern language, they must comply with this information system. A prayer can mention the endless number of times the word God and other words, which are ordinary to Orthodox prayers, but it has a completely non-Christian, occult content, as it is the appeal not to God, but to the opposite forces.

You also must understand that God gives tests to a person only according to his forces, even if they seem overwhelming. The great majority of people, regardless of their position on the earth, are tested through flesh. But the disease is not always evil.

Sometimes sickness is blessing. Perfect health in the flesh can often become perfect evil for the soul. For example, the insomnia can be given to us as a chance for salvation. Our sins celebrate and do not allow us to sleep, therefore this time should be used for prayers, and we shouldn`t to say that there was no time.

"Do we need a healthy body?" - you might ask.  The answer is: "Yes, it is given to fulfill our own mission on earth." The disease is given then, when the man perverts his predestination by his   sins, or, more rarely, it is given as a means for spiritual growth. St. John of Kronstad wrote: "The body is an unfaithful and transitory friend". Many people, having got health, immediately forget about God and the soul and all... But this does not mean that it is not necessary to protect the health and to pray for healing. The main thing is to be able to be thankful to God for the gifts that He gives us and not to use it for evil purposes.

Of the last judgment and the court of human

The Lord came "not to judge the world, but to save it (Jn.12:47). The last Judgment is actually a great and noble act. We also must remember that we are not the judges of this world. Who has the right to condemn? Nobody has. Only the followers of Satan declare it.

The Lord does not punish anyone. He acts through Love. Love nourishes conscience and through this the man is treated. Then the fear of God (it is not physical fear is as a gift.  It is a fear to offend His Love.

At the last judgment the conscience will be awakened by all of us. Then our conscience will throw us from God as far as sinful we were in our earthly lives.

And then the eternal lament for the lost God comes, about which you can read in the patristic   literature. Not demons with boiling cauldrons of pitch are terrible, the eternal loss of God is terrible. Our earthly life will seem like a moment, unfortunately, lost forever. Even the most terrible life will seem a deserted Paradise. But, alas, the return will not be.

To our regret, prayers, cries, groans, remorse, won`t work, as this is earthly good. But not all is lost even here, at least for those, who thought and prepared for it a little. It is an earthly chance. You can be atoned by the prayers of your family, friends, everyone, whom you have prepared for the prayers for you. That's why even the great saints, the elders, ask us to remember them in our prayers after their death. Let's confess at least alone with ourselves - whether we are ready for it. It is your right how to live farther...

We prepare our judgment on judgment day for ourselves. It does not matter what you were on earth, all people are bare before God. And at the last judgment it will be of no importance our belonging to the "upper light", elitism, wealth. This is bluff. But servants of the devil play on this very often, giving you the titles of "dedicated", levels and so forth. It doesn`t play any role for the salvation of the soul, but the higher a “dedicated” person is the more terrible the tortures of hell are.

It is very easy to blame God in cruelty to those people in hell. Actually it is not so. Even if the Lord wanted to free the sinner, the conscience of the sinner would throw him back. Sin can`t get on with God.

But the hell is primarily purgatory for someone, where the soul is forming in the fire and   liberating from sin like iron releases from the slag. The soul of the sinner is cleansed by the prayers of the living people too. The prayer is a fire, purifying the soul. For the estimation of a   personality it is important not only how he lived, but how he died. Every sin has its own level of purification, because we don`t punish a two-year baby with prison for that that he has eaten a candy without asking? So it is there too. Another thing is that every unrepentant sin has   grown together with its owner, so that to cut out or burn out it can`t be painless; anesthesia will not help here. And what will be if the sin has infiltrated a whole person, his whole being?

The judgment of God is not like the court of men. From the Gospel we remember how the earthen court of the Roman Empire with its perfect law has condemned the Righteous to death.  The human "domestic court" is more imperfect; those estimates, which we casually give those people, who are around us. Let us remember how Judas blamed on Jesus Christ that He had sat with publicans and harlots (some false prophets continue to repeat this accusation). Although this is just a proof that God is merciful and ready to accept everybody, who is ready to come to him with a humble heart. Religion and atheism are two directions in a single thread of religion, in which there is a place for the lightest forces and the darkest forces that is connected with human nature. There are also a lot of demonic cults.

So remember the words of the Psalm: "Do not trust in princes, in sons of men, in whom there is no salvation" (PS. 145, 3) you must trust in God. The words “Fate is in the hands of God” are an axiom that requires no proof for a reasonable person. We came into this world not for posts and not for “blue blood.

Why are we so cruel not only to the people around us, but to ourselves? It is so, because of the absence or lack of faith. Why are we ready to go through the corpse in the truest sense of the word to get a good position? It is because of disbelief. We don't believe in God not because He does not come to us, does not give us to know about Him. We just don't want to see Him, because if we see Him, we`ll have to change all our lives. In order not to fear the judgment of God, we must be compassionate to those people, who are around us, because it will be” a judgment without mercy to that one, who gave no mercy" (James. 2, 13). God waits for everybody with tears, with sorrow for parting.  All this is sad. But this sadness will be   compensated for the infinitely surpassing joy of the Meeting, which is possible for all people. You only must believe in God, incarnated and endured crucifixion and death on the cross in order that we could live forever.

About Russia and its history

In the historical context the national ideal of life and control is created by two conditions: first, it follows from the religious - metaphysical sphere, secondly, it follows from the sphere of the practical life, in which, according to remark of L. A. Tikhomirov, the people of this nation put into practice their own ideas of truth and adapt them to their needs, to the conditions of social life. Under the influence of these two categories it is developed the moral ideal of a fighter, a hero and a statesman.  Let us remember the Holy Emperor Nicholas II, who really embodied the moral ideals. But the imperialist war, the bourgeois revolution, the October revolution, the fratricidal civil war, brought to life by anti – Christ forces, warring and fighting for power over the world swept in the First world war the monarchy in Russia, the same was in Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire. At that time  the malignant metastases of idea about an universal  anti-Christian state penetrated into the consciousness of masses of people, giving rise to dreams of a world government  of dictatorship of the proletariat, or (Hitler) of  world  domination of the Aryan race. However, the moral ideal and the martyrdom of the Emperor and of the Holy new martyrs and Confessors of Russia helped to keep the center of Orthodoxy in Russia, which all the hoses of Communists could not destroy.

The martyr Emperor Nicholas II, when punishing Lenin for his subversive activities against the state, sent him into exile in Shushenskoye, where he had a comfortable stay, decent salaries, books, and where even the wife could come and live with him. When the situation has changed   Lenin`s comrades, who could not take such a decision without him, shot not only the King in the basement, but also his entire family.

Solonevich gives a very interesting testimony about the attitude of Lenin towards the Bolsheviks, as professionals, in his book “The White Empire”: "Let me on this occasion give an illustration of the obvious political genius Vladimir Lenin. In correspondence with Gorkiy, who has long suffered from tuberculosis, Lenin expresses a touching concern about the health of our proletarian writer:" I am very worried about the news that you are treating by the doctor – Bolshevik, although the former.  God forbid us, generally, from comrades and from doctors - Bolsheviks in particular. Indeed, doctors – comrades are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred doctors asses. To use their invention is terrible." But Russia, believing in the invention of the Bolsheviks, had tasted the fruit of them in the full...

A patient N. Ostrovsky wrote: "Life is given to man once, and you should live it, so that you are not painfully hurt because of the years lived in vain". The Communists, who used this quote, actually organized for several generations largely a meaningless life, having created a whole generation of "Homo Sovieticus" with the managed "mass unconscious."

The intellectuals have to return what was lost in the sly vortex of "Western education" and have   fascinated common people.  I agree completely with the statement that the intellectuals by own example should return their duty to the people for their pre-revolutionary depravation. But the intellectuals take part in a new corruption of nation: television, shows, swearing. And all this occurs, because there is no awareness of their own responsibility, the correct understanding of   their place in the world. A great idea can be found by I. L. Solonevich in his work "The White Empire": "A genius in science and in art is a gift of God. In philosophy it is the temptation". How many people fell for this temptation and became nobody. In the scope of eternity a brilliant philosopher is not the one, who has just created a magnificent consistent philosophical system or concept, but that one, who, unlike many other philosophers, having created it stands out by his   understanding of his nothingness before God the Creator.

Seventy years of the Communist regime almost completely suppressed the Russian people the spiritual mind almost completely, where thoughts and actions are based and even unconsciously agreed with the laws of the Scriptures. This can be compared with driving of old motorists, who often don't remember all the intricacies of the rules of driving, but they drive trouble-free. The rules have become a kind of inner "I".

The Americans, maybe without even knowing it, called the USSR "an evil Empire" partly rightly. But their world is the same evil Empire...  An interesting, intricately masking thought can be found in the book of S. Huntington “The clash of civilizations": "I believe that in the coming world not ideology and not economy will be the main source of conflict. The most important boundaries which divide humanity and the prevailing sources of conflicts will be determined by culture”. It can be argued that ideology is a part of the culture; the process of globalization is accompanied by the cultural intervention. Not so much culture as religion defines conflict of the world of the beginning of the third Millennium - the confrontation between the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of Antichrist. Only time shows what will be the fate of Russia in this war.

Mirages of the occultism

The works of Russian occultists of the turn of the Millennia were characterized by speculation on the little known and unexplored problems. However, the speculative thread is reducing with emergence of scientific developments of topics, descriptions,  with increasing amount of information. It is well known such a rule: the lie is based on ignorance, decorated with pseudo-scientific terms.

Sadly we have to observe that, as the elder Paisios wrote, "The most people were deformed from learning". Christ was written in the book "The great initiates", thereby trying to equalize Him to the "great" crooks. The concept of "the initiate" suggests a narrow circle, the gnostic character of the teaching that was originally alien to Christianity. All "prophets", "initiates" and so on, giving information of some of the “higher mind”, which distracts from Christianity, are false prophets whom Christ has spoken about. Therefore, they receive information from Satan.

Today astrology is fashionable. Do the stars influence on human destiny? Yes, they do.  They affect the flesh and the mind; the choice of the mind affects destiny. But the stars have no power over the man, who has chosen the spiritual feat in the name of the Lord; as the Saint Basil the Great wrote: "Water of christening washes away prints of stars”.

Some people say in justification of their occult practices that they use only white magic. The difference between black and white magic is like color of human feces.

There is no karma for the Christian. The main evidence is the incarnation of God. God was united in Christ with the whole mankind, gave everyone a chance of salvation. The fact of the connection of God with human nature shows that each human person has a great value, and   excludes the possibility of karmic reincarnation on earth.

It is interesting that, when I gave this argument in debate with one ardent follower of the teachings of karma, he suddenly raised his hands: "This is a complete knockout. Only a complete idiot can deny Christ's appearance" It is curious the fact of the meeting; we were brought together that there would be no trace from me left."

The main error in the doctrine of karma is that the soul was carried in the circulation of substances in nature (our flesh consists of them) that doesn`t live according to the primitive laws of matter, which can affect it only through the body. One of the tragic mistakes of mankind is that the material laws are transferred to the spiritual realm. Poor Soviet students had to learn such Sciences, as Marxist-Leninist ethics, i.e. morality, based on matter, which has no moral dimension. But if there is no karma, life is given to us only once, how great the responsibility of each person is for that how the earthly way will be passed!

One of the temptations of Christ by Satan in the desert, who tempted all mankind through Him, was the reign and dominion over the world, and in exchange for it - the requirement to worship the spirit of darkness. Christ answered that one can worship and serve only God. The answer of every Christian must be so.

Do not appeal to demons and those, who serve them if you get into difficult situations, go to Church.

The experience of the Holy fathers teaches us to be attentive to every word, speaking in scientific language, - to the meaning that carries every word in a given context. Just think of the comma, giving or taking life: “to punish can`t be pardoned". The same sentence can be used as an example of the operation of the principle of "Vice versa". It is this fact that gives grounds to say that quoting Scripture is not always a guarantee of the Truth. The same is relevant to the direct words of the Savior: "Not everyone who says unto Me:” Lord! Lord!” will enter the Kingdom of heaven." All major Christian and even many non-Christian heresies are based on Scripture. Tempting Christ in the wilderness, Satan spoke with quotes from the Bible. The only chance to avoid mental traps is to refer to the commentaries of Scripture of the Holy fathers.

Using the freedom of choice, we often choose evil. Orthodoxy offers to a person to limit his freedom in the Name of the Lord voluntary to avoid it.

God is perceived in humility.  It is useless to read the gospel for a man in pride or charms.  He will find nothing except historical, cultural, and other similar things. The Living Book reaches   the living crying heart, and opens such depths of an unspeakable Infinity that all encyclopedias of the world begin to be perceived as a child's coloring...

Many people ask for direct advice: what to do? You must define your place in relation to God, to build the relationship to the Lord and not to interrupt it. St. Silouan of Athon said about it very well: "It is one thing to talk about God and the other thing is to know Him more personally. We can feel love to God through love to the others, when we regard anyone, with whom our life brings us together, as we would like to be regarded in this situation, and the knowledge of God comes through purity of heart.